More about bridge building, less about shocking facts

510: If Animal Rights hasn’t touched enough people, it’s time to re-consider our approach. I’m into easing up on giving people ‘shocking-facts’. I’d rather concentrate a bit more on bridge-building. I say that not because the truth needs hiding but because we need to reform our the vegan image. Back in the 1980’s when the horrors of modern animal farming first came to light everyone was shocked, but soon enough it was ‘business as usual’. In 2012 things, down-on-the-farm, are worse and the horrors more widespread - there are more species of animal being abused and more individual animals being subjected to cruelty and indifference than ever before. The brainchild of modern factory farming, in the 1940s, was the idea of confining the movement of ‘moving animals’. It was a brilliant, if demonic, idea – to treat animals as if they were simply production machines. The phrase ‘hens in cages’ came to represent the extent to which humans could ‘beat Nature’ and get the most out of Nature. The cage came to be the very symbol of animal cruelty. And from there, where? The facts have not frightened, inspired or induced people to boycott cruelly-produced, animal-based commodities. And that says something fundamental about human nature ... and yet, how concrete it is is arguable (And therefore, how big a job vegans will have trying to change it). This is how it seems to me: Yes, people are genuinely shocked when they hear about cruelty. Yes, people shake their heads in disbelief . No, people will NOT inflict self-punishment, food-punishments especially. And yes, people still think that if they boycott animal products they would ruin the quality of their life. It is true that being vegan reduces choices in the supermarket food department by about 40%. (In a survey I once did, in a supermarket, out of 7000 shelf choices some 4,000 contained animal ingredients). You might be firmly against hens in cages but the question is whether you are ready to drop your favourite biscuits because they contain caged-hens’ eggs. It seems that we humans are not yet willing to change the habits of our lifetime, unless we’re in personal health danger. We say, “Be kind to animals”, but that’s where it stops. It doesn’t extend to farm animals. And that, to me, is inexplicable. For vegans that is the point from which our whole different lifestyle begins. And from that stems my suspicion that humans are not to be trusted around animals, since we have such a rich history of abusing them. I’m on a visit to England at the moment, and I was walking along a magically beautiful river bank today, and in a paddock next to the path was a herd of black cows. They live in one of the prettiest places in England BUT they can’t experience any of it - they’re imprisoned in a field surrounded by barbed wire and below the levee bank. They can’t actually see the river from where they stand. It occurred to me that these cows, these carbon-based lifeforms are soft. They can never overcome the mineral-based steel which imprisons them. Steel, cold, hard, sharp – Nature has no defence against the fence. Steel was invented by humans to help them dominate, and in this case to enslave their soft carbon-based underlings. Steel is the undoing of the farm animal – there’s no escape past it. No cow can contend with steel wire with sharp piercing points. So these cows are forced to wander like lunatics in an asylum, feeding solely on one crop, grass, with very little dietary variation. The sole purpose of their being is to fatten and await a cruel execution, which is, surely, no reason for living. We dominate the animals, efficiently and in a cold-as-steel way, which is why animal advocates start from a ‘rights’ point of view and not one of welfare reform. I, like many vegans, only promote a no-use-animal policy. This view, however, is a long way from how most other people see things. But here’s the funny thing. I often hear people say, “I agree with you … and that’s why I only eat free range”. Should I point out to them that ALL farm animals are executed cruelly, these ‘free’ hens the same as battery cage hens? Well, no ... maybe yes, maybe no. Building bridges towards understanding might be more useful than rubbing salt into guilt-wounds. I utter the word ‘battery-hen’ and people think I’m only talking ‘eggs’, while I’m aiming towards talking far more broadly. The ‘hen’ example is only part of a much vaster picture of animal exploitation. At some stage in human history, every omnivore will either be so sick from eating animal stuff or the animals themselves will be so sick, or both, that they’ll be forced to come to terms with (what we know today as) ‘vegan principle’. And, in all fairness, they may find the finding-out interesting and eventually the most valuable information they’ve ever picked up. However, at present any information a vegan might impart will only ever seem like a propaganda rave. Eventually people will be interested enough to want to understand the difference between vegetarian and vegan ... and when they know more, who knows, they might see the light ... or not! Very often it’s “Thanks very much but that’s as far as I go”. And the next time I’m spotted, walking down the street they cross over, to avoid being ear-bashed; being bailed up by an evangelising vegan is never nice. And that’s my main point. We have to be able to shake off our earlier stultifying image, otherwise Animal Rights will seem to have deteriorated into a cult. The protection of animals should never become a church, which is why vegans should never preach. (It simply doesn’t work, in my opinion). And also, vegans shouldn’t confuse being vegan-proud with boasting about it. Preaching and bragging go hand in hand here. If a vegan isn’t allowed to preach at people they might just settle for bragging, by finding excuses to tell the world, “I am a vegan …(implying they are ‘second cousin, once removed, from Jesus Christ’)”. Righteousness, I mean self-righteousness, is ugly. If omnivores want to dislike us for being ‘up’ ourselves they have every right. I’d rather be known for igniting dangerous discussions. Perhaps, as vegans, we are radicals, revolutionaries and reprobates, but I think we can be forgiven if we’ open (I mean open as in ‘soft-open’, as in not radiating any aggro). Before I step through your front door, before I enter your living room, before I launch an ethics attack on your heart, I must be acceptable to you. I want you to like me and accept me for who I am and what WE stand for. Without that, I can’t expect you to let me put my foot in your door. This is why I prefer NOT to be the purveyor of shocking-facts (tempting though it is, in the face of so much ignorance). I try, instead, to be thought of as a sort of handy-corner-shop-cum-library, a conduit for ideas, a purveyor of information-on-request. From my point of view, if YOU don’t know what’s going on, you can’t be expected to question the animal-food you eat, and I’m starting from that basis ... until I know otherwise. It’s possible that you DO know but don’t care anyway, but I’d need to be sure about that before I leave my little information booth. At this point in time, still so relatively early in Society’s Animal Rights consciousness, I think some caution is needed from us. As an advocate for animal liberation, I try to restrain myself. Although I’m never short of something to say, I often keep schtum. It’s not that I’m embarrassed or ashamed or shy or short on argument. In fact I’m happy to speak freely, as I would with any other social issue ...but this particular subject is a ticklish one. We, all of us, literally eat our words every day, and that determines our view on these animals. Whilst vegans are free to be open on this subject, non-vegans are probably not. I often expect people to be as open with me as I think I am being with them, but let’s be honest, we vegans can sometimes act like attack dogs. I have to learn how NOT to drop bombs on people. As soon as I start to turn the screws I can see the effect it has on others, within earshot. What they hear isn’t necessarily what I’m saying – they often feel me getting ‘personal-by-implication’. They see me getting snippy about ‘differences of opinion’. They hear familiar words they’ve heard before, which sound like scriptural quotes. So they feel bored by me and I get frustrated with them, and then, effectively, our time’s up ... any chance of a useful dialogue is over. If I can keep non-judgemental in my exchanges then I probably can’t go wrong; I’m more likely to be accepted as an approachable person, along with what I wanted to say. Somehow, god-knows-how, we need to establish mutual respect by promising not to judge each other’s values. I want to ooze non-judgement. I never want to be seen lunging at anybody with my spear of truth.